Worlds First Health & Environment Global Treaty on Mercury Becomes

International Law Wednesday, August 16th

(Gteborg, Sweden) The Minamata Convention, the worlds first legally binding global
agreement to reduce mercury pollution, becomes International law on Wednesday, August
16th, 2017. Environmental health leaders from IPEN (a global network of NGOs in over 100
countries combatting toxic pollutants) celebrate the historical global health and
environmental treaty and call on world governments to take the next steps to ensure no
more Minamatas.

The treaty, say IPEN leaders, is the beginning of the end of mercury in the global economy.
But to actualize the aim of the treatyprotecting the health of current and future
generations, food chains and the environment from mercury pollution requires stronger
coordinated global action. Ending mercury use and emissions at its primary sources such
as small-scale gold mining, coal fired power plants and cement kilns and halting the global
mercury trade are key. Identifying and remediating contaminated sites are also essential to
protecting human health from the highly toxic metal.

The Minamata Convention, the first legally binding chemical treaty in a decade, recognizes
that mercury is a global threat to human health, livelihood and the environment. Currently
74 countries have ratified the treaty, exceeding the threshold of 50 countries that allows
the treaty to enter into force.

Mercury-contaminated sites have become a slow disaster in many countries, poisoning

fish stocks and making communities sick. It is not enough to ban new industrial uses. To
prevent mercury devastation for new generations, we need unified guidelines so that
countries can identify and control risk from these sites and clean up communities where
heavy mercury loads in the environment perpetuate harm to current and future
generations, said IPEN Mercury Policy Advisor, Dr. Lee Bell.

Use of mercury in gold mining and coal fired power plants are leading causes of mercury
emissions on the planet. Small scale gold mining is an extremely hazardous process that
sickens miners, their families and communities. According to the United Nations
Environment Program, approximately 15 million people in over 70 countries engage in
artisanal small scale gold mining (ASGM) activities for their livelihood, practices that
mainly use mercury. Although declining, mercury from illicit sources have been and are
still being used in many illegal small-scale gold mining practices.

The tragedy of mercury causes profound health and economic impacts in some of the most
impoverished communities around the world; communities that subsist through small
scale gold mining. Unless we take global action to end the international mercury trade that
dumps mercury into communities near gold mining sites, we will continue to poison some
of the most vulnerable and marginalized people on our planet, said IPEN lead for ASGM
and Goldman Prize Winner Yuyun Ismawati.

To protect residents from adverse health effects, countries must improve their mercury
monitoring, health measures, and food advisories, and increase the capacity of health
practitioners to understand and tackle issues related to mercury poisoning.

IPEN Co-Chair and Goldman Prize Winner Dr. Olga Speranskaya says, Monitoring of
mercury levels in food products must be improved. The majority of developing countries,
and countries with economies in transition, do not issue recommendations to pregnant
women on daily intake limits of mercury-containing food products such fish and rice, with
dire consequences. Most developing countries lack limits for mercury levels in fish. Those
that have established limits, often set them lower than relevant limits of developed
countries, thus reducing the level of protection of their residents from the adverse health
impacts of mercury.

Just as the treaty itself emerged from the work of hundreds of NGOs around the world to
raise the alarm on far-reaching mercury impacts, the NGO community is resolved to ensure
the treaty is effective.

Our community of global environmental health, justice, and human rights NGOs will
continue to hold the worlds governments accountable to uphold the spirit and intent of the
treaty, to encourage more countries to ratify, and to advocate for governments to take
necessary actions so that this important agreement successfully protects the many millions
of humans threatened by mercury, said Pamela Miller, IPEN Co-Chair.

The historical treaty is named after the Minamata disaster in Japan in which industrial
dumping of mercury into Minamata Bay killed and sickened tens of thousands of people.

Mercury exposure damages the nervous system, kidneys, and cardiovascular system.
Developing organ systems, such as the fetal nervous system, are the most sensitive to the
toxic effects of mercury, although nearly all organs are vulnerable. Human exposure to
mercury occurs primarily through the consumption of contaminated fish and through
direct contact with mercury vapor through small scale gold mining practices. Very small
amounts of mercury, as little as 1 ppm measured in hair, has been recognized by the US
EPA as a threshold above which mercury can cause brain damage in developing fetuses.
New scientific literature is suggesting that mercury is even more harmful than previously
understood, with negative neurological impacts noted at levels above 0.58 ppm.

Coal fired power plants, the second greatest source of mercury contamination and a
primary contributor to climate change, release atmospheric mercury which deposits into
the worlds oceans and enters the food chain, accumulating in fish and burdening human
health.